Development

Tales for an Accelerated Culture

May 17, 2018

Rebecca Kilbreath, Editor in Chief

As a card-carrying member of Gen X, a generation predisposed to irony and self-doubt, it can be hard to share successes without first discounting our efforts. Luckily, the same doesn’t apply to sharing the successes of others.

rd+d was founded with the idea of sharing work with your peers. It’s a publication we hope you want to read and participate in. Sharing your successes and challenges celebrates your team, benefits your peers and makes the industry a better place.

Apparently, the American Society of Business Publishing Editors (ASBPE) agrees. At their recent awards banquet, our web-exclusive column One Problem | Three Solutions earned a bronze award in the Blog, Tips/Service category. What makes this recognition all the more exciting is the fact that an rd+d reader writes it. When restaurant designer Steve Starr told us he wanted to contribute content, we worked with his team to craft a blog that presents a key challenge developers and designers face. He then provides three workable solutions to that challenge. He’s tackled the specific (acoustics, site selection) and the conceptual (ROI and design, telling a brand story) with equal expertise and enthusiasm.

Our website is increasingly an extension of the print experience, and it provides us with the opportunity to offer more Q&As with designers and developers, more photos, more short and timely project profiles — more of everything.

In addition to our website, we’re also developing reader-driven experiences. Tour the Design Trends, rd+d’s first-of-its-kind event that brings together a select group of readers for a daylong immersive experience in restaurant design, earned a top spot as a national finalist for Best Cross-Platform Package of the Year.

Finally, it was also great to see my fellow editors and art directors garner awards and acclaim. This includes seeing Zoomba Group Art and Production Assistant Eric Uhl nab his first national design award for his work on this publication. And pictured above you can see me, a friend, Eric Uhl, and regular contributor Amelia Levin at a meetup for the International Foodservice Editorial Council.

It was humbling to see the ASBPE affirm rd+d’s mission of providing a peer-driven resource for the restaurant design community with awards for the magazine’s efforts in editorial, social media and design.

If you’d like to add your tale, highlight your project, share a great case study, or have an emotional ketchup burst about the state of restaurant development and/or design, please let us know.